David Hilbert Quotes
Geometry, like arithmetic, requires for its logical development only a small number of simple, fundamental principles. These fundamental principles are called the axioms of geometry.
Hilbert, David. The Foundations of Geometry, translated by E. J. Townsend, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1902, p. 1.
This quotation illustrates one of the major reasons politicians and laymen have difficulty making educational policy on mathematics education. It is the laws that govern mathematics and their structure that is most critical, not the ability to calculate and measure although the latter are important and useful by products.
David Hilbert was a German mathematician and one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory, the calculus of variations, commutative algebra, algebraic number theory, the foundations of geometry, spectral theory of operators and its application to integral equations, mathematical physics, and the foundations of mathematics (particularly proof theory).
